“I grew up viewing this music as something unique to the state of Mississippi so you can imagine my shock to discover that this was actually a ubiquitous form of black music particularly in the period of Reconstruction. It lasted longer in the state of Mississippi than anywhere else." (History is Lunch: John M. Shaw, “The South’s Black Fife and Drum Tradition.”) Mr. Shaw’s research shows that this was true throughout most of the states that are considered Southern.
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You can see it all in the video.
It’s a quiet Mississippi afternoon in the hill country. Then you hear the drums. They’re far off but getting closer. Then you hear the fife playing high-pitched simple melodies. The drums are louder, almost drowning out the high, plaintive singing of the fife. Then you see the truck, with three men sitting in the back. They’re dressed like farmers on their day off, which is what they are. Their clothes look good and they wear straw pork-pie hats. One is playing the bass drum, one is playing a snare drum, and one is playing a homemade fife, made from a kind of cane plant that grows on and around his property.
The truck pulls into a barnyard, and the men get out and start playing. Cars are parked by the barn, and some people are standing around. Some are cooking, and some are just standing in the shade drinking beer.
The musicians are playing and walking at a measured pace around the barnyard. The fife player is Otha Turner and the band is the Rising Star Fife and drum band. This is the annual Otha Turner goat roast and family reunion. It’s a big event in the hill country, and neighbors from miles around will attend. A small group of men surround the band and they dance to the music. The beats are strong and the men are limber dancers. They seem to be improvising their dances. The musicians encourage them.
Turner tells the man with the camera that the song they just played is a good “leading song.” It’s a good song to start the festivities with. “How far can people hear it?” asks the cameraman. Turner answers as he often does in a flurry of emphatic speech. “They can hear it for a mile or two, or three or four mile.” The sound can travel even further when the truck goes along the tops of the hills. “People will come around when they hear that,” he explains. “It means something good is happening at Otha’s place, they’ll come and see about it.”
That something special is the Labor Day Picnic at Otha Turner’s farm. There will be music, food, and general partying. The Rising Stars Fife and Drum Band will be featured. They like to play blues and church songs. It’s an annual tradition and it represents the tail end of the Black fife and drum bands. After the Civil War, they were everywhere throughout the South, causing musicologist John M. Shaw, in his video “The South’s Black Fife and Drum Tradition,” to call the music “ubiquitous.”
Shaw goes on to say what years fife and drum bands disappeared from their communities. They disappear because of a lack of opportunity and interest. At first, after the Civil War, the bands provided an alternative to insurance. The bands played at funerals and parades. They made sure you had a good crowd at your funeral because belonging to the club meant you had to be supportive and go to the funerals.
Eventually, people got tired of it. Young people think it’s old-fashioned, and the tradition dies out. The fife and drum bands are relegated to playing at picnics and family reunions. As so many things do, the bands fade away. According to Shaw, the drum bands, as they were often called, lasted into the 1980s.
Then a miracle happened. One of Turner’s grandchildren, a young girl about 7 years old wanted to learn to play the fife, just like her granddaddy. So he gave her one. Later he would teach her how to make her own. The girl’s name was Sharde Thomas, and she took to the fife music like a real musician. She struggled to get better, and she played with the band. When she was 12, her grandfather passed away and she took leadership of the band. She played gigs that Otha was scheduled to play when he died. This included playing on bluesman Corey Harris’ album, Mississippi to Mali. She also played festival dates. She started playing with Luther Dickinson and his North Mississippi All-Stars. This was a natural step as Dickinson had always attended Otha Turner’s Labor Day picnics. He would sit in with Turner, playing electric slide guitar, creating fluid harmonies behind the cane flute music.
Sharde is carrying on Otha’s tradition and taking it into the future. Her band plays at festivals and concerts all around the world. The picnic has transformed into a concert occasion with a proper stage and sound facilities. Sharde’s music finds her looking back to her grandfather’s tradition and keeping that alive. Her own music can sound surprisingly modern but still based on the old beats, and her handmade cane flute carries the melodies and harmonies out of the past and into the future. In her songs, she is creating a new vocabulary for the old music. This is how traditions survive.
There was a time when the New Orleans style of Black marching bands had all but died out. Then the Dirty Dozen Brass Band caught on, and now the format is wildly popular and there are new brass bands all over the place. I guess you could call it a movement. History is honored and a future is created.
Maybe the same thing can happen with the Black Fife and Drum bands.